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To: Sector Investor who wrote (531)	11/13/1997 4:56:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1629

Pac Bell debuts FasTrack DSL service Phone lines: Selected cities offered higher-speed access to Net, networks. BY JON HEALEY Mercury News Staff Writer Pacific Bell today will launch a long-awaited service to boost the performance of its phone lines, giving customers in selected Bay Area communities high-speed access to the Internet and corporate computer networks. The service, based on so-called asymmetric digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, is three to 10 times as fast as ISDN, Pac Bell's other high-speed service. But it may be slower and is far more expensive than the services gradually being introduced by Tele-Communications Inc., the Bay Area's dominant cable company. A handful of entrepreneurial phone companies are expected to launch their own DSL offerings in the Bay Area, too, and a number of high-speed wireless alternatives are on their way. But Pac Bell has a head start on the competition, in part because the company thwarted other firms' efforts to offer DSL service through the lines used by burglar alarm companies. The driving force behind this competition is the growing hunger for bandwidth -- the capacity to transport information to and from computers around the globe. The demand for bandwidth is climbing fast as the Internet becomes a prime conduit for entertainment and commerce, more companies rely on workers outside their offices, and the increasingly global economy requires more information to be transported electronically. In this competition -- involving at least six different technologies -- the deciding points for consumers will be price, speed, reliability and availability. The Pac Bell service, dubbed FasTrack DSL, is too expensive to be practical for a casual Internet user. The main appeal will be to small to mid-sized businesses that want fast Internet access or that move large amounts of data in and out of their networks -- to telecommuting employees, for example, or to subcontractors. In light of the competition to come, Pac Bell will have to do a better job on FasTrack DSL's customer service than it has done with ISDN. Consumers complain that the ISDN service from Pac Bell has been plagued by long waits for installation and unreliable performance. DSL vastly increases the capacity and speed of ordinary phone lines by using special equipment at the customer's premises and Pac Bell's central offices. This equipment transmits data at frequencies above those used for ordinary phone conversations, allowing users to surf the Internet and make phone calls simultaneously over a single line. The main problem with DSL and related services is that they require a certain type of copper line to work, and not every customer has that kind of line. Indeed, the newest buildings and housing developments often boast fiber-optic cables in lieu of copper wires.